


In More Than Name

by Illusion_Of_Sea_Axes



Series: Nerves of Steel (From the Waist Down) [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Acknowledgement of Omegas effects on Doc and Caboose, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amputation, Cybernetics, Cyborg Agent Washington, Disembowelment, Everyone's a Mcfucking MESS, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Injury Recovery, Near Death, Post-Season/Series 08 Finale, Smoking, Via car, handling trauma, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-01 22:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20421830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Illusion_Of_Sea_Axes/pseuds/Illusion_Of_Sea_Axes
Summary: Agent Washington turns away from the Meta and that is ultimately his biggest mistake.





	1. 2

Washington turns away from the Meta and that is ultimately his biggest mistake.

He turns, bloodied knife in hand, to see the bright blues and reds of the simulation troopers in stark contrast to the snow.

_Hope_ blooms wild and unhinged inside his aching chest. It almost steals his breath away. 

The metal of the warthog squeals with pressure and Washington doesn’t turn around fast enough to even _see_ the giant mass of burned and warped metal before it hits him.

_That_ steals his breath away. 

Metal, warped and sharp, stabs into Washington’s back, snapping through the under armor bodysuit— 

A single heart beat, loud and hard inside his skull, and the warthog tusks sink into meat and muscle and white, white, all Washington sees is _ white _. 

The pain, it punches through lungs, burns, deflates, his remaining scream choking out with the last of his air. 

The warthog flips. It flips and drags Washington along its tusks, one is _ way _too fucking bent, his spine is gonna give— 

The warped tusk snaps, something snaps, maybe Washington, _ fuck _ , pain courses hot and sharp and stabbing and Washington feels it flood his stomach and his throat and it _ burns _.

Snow, snow, all he sees is snow, or maybe his vision wipes out, because the warthog still has fucking _ momentum _. 

Washington screams. 

He screams as his vision whites out, as his brain temporarily shuts it out, it _ has _ to, _ suit integrity compromised _ beeps his HUD, suit integrity, screaming—

Washington’s face, his chest, snaps into the snow and the warthog carries over him, the tusks rip and tear and he can’t _ breathe _. 

The world stops. 

The world stops and Washington blacks out because he has to, because his brain shuts down, it had to, it _ had _ to, he’s not dead, _ no _ , he’s not, because a moment later the world comes back in a ringing screaming white hot mess of _ pain _.

Washington would scream if he had the oxygen in his lungs to power it, but he doesn’t, he can feel the thump thump of his stuttered heartbeat in his jaw and his HUD is pointlessly informing him that his suit integrity is fucked. His torso spasms, individual muscles overloading from the pain, the pain that thumps and floods the bowl of Washington’s skull and binds to the cells in his veins and he shrieks. 

The muscles of Washington’s chest, they spasm under the crumpled weight of his armor and he sucks in breath, sucks in air, its cold now, its so cold, it _ hurts _. 

He’s breathing, each breath is cold and jagged and bile burns at the back of Washington’s throat, his chest hurts, the expanding and depressing of his lungs hurts against his fucked up ribs, but he’s still breathing. 

Breathing. Breathing. He can’t feel his legs. The burning of bodysuit heat-fused to flesh, it’s gone, he can’t— 

He coughs up blood and it splatters the inside of his visor, he can see that, he can see the gray of the clouds, it’s snowing. The flakes land on his visor, untouched by Washington’s blood, unaffected.

“Fuck, fuck, what do we—”

“— He’s missing his fuckin—”

“God dammit!” 

Washington’s head lolls to the side, his breath, rasping, wet and heavy and he sees the blurred colorful shadows of the sim troopers, just out of reach.

They’re still here, he’s still here. His ears are still ringing, his head is hollow and pained and he doesn’t know how he’s still fucking breathing. 

“Hey, Washington, Wash stay with me, okay?” Someone pats his shoulder, shaking, they’re shaking and Washington is spasming, that’s the difference.

“H— Hurts!” Washington chokes out, rasps, his eyes burn and ache and he wants to go to sleep for a long time. It's too cold to sleep, though. His gut, his torso, it burns like it’s set on _ fire _. 

The contrast hurts his head. He doesn’t know why but it does. 

“I— I know, Wash, I know, don’t worry, you’ll be okay. You’ll be… okay… somehow.” 

“ — Real encouraging, Doc—” 

“H— Help, pl—” He coughs and clots of blood get wedged in the creases of his throat, blood sprays the interior of his visor, he’s _ dying _ . Coughing up blood is_ bad_.

“Oh, fuck, fuck, how the hell—” 

“Sarge! Sarge, get over here, bring—“

There’s weight on Washington’s chest and his entire body is clutched tightly in the fist of pain spasms. He cries out. He doesn’t scream, he doesn’t have enough in his lungs, the sound comes up from the back of his throat and the hand jerks away and there’s so many voices and noises that he can’t understand anymore.

His brain is shutting down. He’s slowly shutting down completely but he still _ hurts _. How unfair.

“Don’t— Don’t worry, Wash, don’t worry, we’re gonna help you, hold on—”

Washington tries, okay, he fucking tries. He counts his breathing, heartbeat, counts it, counts time, he needs to fucking stay alive, hold on, stay, c’mon Washington, _ you’ve survived a ship crashing from orbit, you can survive this— _

Hands grab onto his body, the angry burning, gloves rubbing over hot and wet and fucked up and Washington cries out. His chest spasms and he cries out (he can’t scream, can’t scream) into the unforgiving echo of his helmet but the hands don’t go away. 

Washington blacks out. 

  


The world snaps back into existence in bright light and pain. 

It courses hot and red in the thin flesh of his eyelids, yellow and black spots spitting through, and a heavy fist clutches around his rib cage. 

The insides squeal, slosh and burn, ribs squeezed tight. 

Washington isn’t breathing. Air drifts idly though his nose but it’s not enough,_ not enough _. His mouth opens, the terror working up into his mouth fast and overflowing, pushing some pain-choked noise out of him. 

Some hind-brain response stabs through his spine, it arcs, and something shifts against Washington’s short-buzzed hair. Air rushes into deflated lungs and when they expand, they burn. 

Something presses against his chest, pushing, pushing, no he can’t he needs to keep breathing, what’s pushing— pain floods up through the volume of his body and up into his skull. It’s metal, melted into heavy molten agony coursing into his arteries and the dome of his skull. 

He cries out. He cries out and he hears it, hears it through the sudden oppressive silence that’s curtaining his head. 

His insides, they sway and slosh and ache. His arms rock into his sides and the world is moving. The world is moving and Washington is moving because so is everything around him and—

“Easy, son, _ easy— _Simmons, he’s awake! Simmons!” It sinks through the curtain, it sinks in like the gradual recovery from the boom of an explosion. 

With it, comes the rest of the world without the preamble.

The world is dark and rumbling above and under, wind howling distantly and chopping up into nothing, a ship, something tucked under his head, blood, metallic and sharp burning into Washington’s senses. His gasp echoes.

There is no armor. There is no bodysuit. Bare skin on fabric. Vulnerable. 

“Oh, oh my god, does he need— does he need blood or—?”

Washington moves his tongue. It feels swollen and stupid in his mouth, thumping against teeth and the walls of his mouth. He considers how hard it’d be to choke on it. His head lolls to the side, the fluid in his ears hurts as it adjusts.

He needs to do something, _ something _. He tries to lift his arm and something cold clasps around it before it gets fair. 

“Wash, easy, stop moving, you’re _ hurt— _”

Washington tries to fight the grip, move away, but at the pull on muscles in his other arm, it sets his skin on fire. The chill, flowing sharp and biting against random points on Washington’s skin, aggravates it. The fabric should be _ over _ him, not _ under _him, he thinks numbly. 

“Fuck, the bleedin’s getting worse, Simmons, can you get me the biofoam?”

Biofoam. Biofoam hurts, biofoam is for extreme wounds in the absence of proper medical care. Washington doesn’t know what’s broken, he can feel his arms and his hands and there is no blood, no wound, just aching and hot molten pain in his stomach, was he shot?

When was he shot?

There’s pressure at the space under Washington’s sternum, a hand, and then there’s a hiss of air. Something, liquid and hot and—

Washington shrieks. 

He shrieks as a million little knives, points in the nerves of his musculature, stab into some indiscernible wound in his stomach and it burns acidic into his mouth but it didn’t come up his throat it isn’t in his mouth it’s— 

The world fades out. It fades out, hearing and taste going first, followed by feeling and then whatever sense of sight he has. 

  


“I don’t wanna end up like Georgia!” 

Ship debris flies past him, there’s a bomb, somewhere. There’s a bomb and he’s the only one not in the Pelican and Connie is gone and—

“Leave him, Agent Carolina.” comes in crisp and clean over the COMfreq. 

_ We can’t leave him, Tucker! _

_ What do we fucking do, then? _

The voice seeps in through Washington’s helmet, his skull, like ice water. He sees the shapes, the glimmering colors of his team, his friends, they’re not gonna take this order but also there’s that cold claw of fear sliding into the back of his throat. It locks up the vertebrae of his spine.

“What?” 

“You need to get out of range. One loss is preferable to the entire team.”

There is no dispute, no argument, just the eerie tilt of helmets and _ oh god Carolina’s not even considering disobeying it _. Carolina steps back, her visor reflecting Washington back at him, small and tiny and dwarfed by all the goddamn wreckage swimming past him. It could cleave him in half. 

“Yessir.”

“No, no, no no—” Washington pushes harder on his jetpack, he has to, _ fuck _, he has to get in the Pelican or else the Director will leave him to fucking die and drown with all the secrets and the knowledge of the Project going to atomized bits in the blast. 

Wait, what secrets? Washington doesn’t have Epsilon, or he does, he can’t tell, they already pulled him, no, Maine’s getting Sigma right now or— 

_ Fuck, fuck something’s wrong, something’s wrong! _

The ramp closes up. The ramp closes and the last glimpse Washington gets of his team is the narrow glare of Carolina’s visor, right next to York, and then the Pelican is lurching away, “guys, wait, no, York, South,_ please _ no, come back, _ Carolina! _”

He abandons his rifle, claws, claws desperately through the cold vacuum of space and “doesn’t it ever freak you out how close we are to dying on these missions from just one little hole” York asks as he checks over his firearm—

Washington doesn’t see the blast. He doesn’t see it but he _ feels _ it. He hears the pop and roar of the shockwave before it hits him. The jetpack crumples against his back, his ears pop, and _ hands grab onto his arms, screaming, they’re screaming at him, Wash wake up! _

“Carolina!” It wrenches out of him, a last-second desperate scream as if Carolina would keep listening, as if she’d have been in range, as if— 

Something heavy smacks into his shoulders, slamming Washington into something solid and he’s without his helmet, he’s not in armor, you can’t be in space without armor how is he— “Wash! Wake up!” 

His eyes snap open and the world swims and dives at him in nauseating black and blue and purple and red and there’s a helmet there, it’s not Carolina, “North?” 

He came back for him? No, it can’t be North, the voice is wrong, it’s not North. There's no green.

“Wash, it’s me, it’s Doc, remember me?”

“Who the fuck is North?” Someone asks but Washington can’t move his head, can’t look, he can’t move. 

“Do you— Washington, c’mon, listen to me.”

“Oh, yeah, North is the brother of the purple Freelancer lady that we ran into at Church’s place. She had Delta!” 

No, no that doesn’t make sense, York had Delta, Delta was York’s, he ran statistics and kept York up and helped him solve the locks. 

“Delta?”

“Oh, right, you didn’t ever get to meet him. You would have liked him. He was green!” 

“Carolina!” Washington gasps, again, he sees the flash of teal out of the corners of his eyes and he doesn’t know what to do but she came back for him, _ she came back _.

“Wash— Wash, hey, hey,” hands press into the sides of Washington’s face, straightening it out, the world blurs disconcertingly out of focus. “Wash, it’s the Reds and Blues. Remember the Reds and Blues?” 

The colors are right but the voices are wrong, he can’t see York, or Connie, but Connie betrayed them so of course she’s not here but the voices are wrong wrong_ wrong wrong _— 

The pain tears through Washington with such vigor and surprise that he’s caught between screaming and gasping. He can’t even process what hurts, it just _ does _. 

His legs snap out, he can’t feel them but he knows he’s kicking them, he feels the tug on his lower body. He hears the angry scrape of metal on metal and the clicking of mechanical devices. The hands on his face tense, he feels the tension and the warmth and he is so fucking cold that all he wants is to wrap himself in that body heat. 

There’s a solid thump and a shriek and then there’s so much noise, everyone’s yelling, the voices are still _ wrong _, Washington’s body spasms hard enough to knock the air out of his lungs. 

“Sarge! Sarge, you need to turn off the legs, you need to turn them off!”

“I dunno how ta do that!”  


“Fuck, he hit me! Fuck!” 

“Is he havin’ a fucking _ seizure? _” 

Something hot and wet pulses out and Washington feels it on his bare skin, feels it drip down in the curves of his ribs, he gags on the sudden visceral bite in the back of his throat. He cries out, he has to, he needs someone to fucking help him, make it stop, all of it, “please!” 

“Wash, Wash you gotta stop kicking your legs, Wash! Washington, please—”

The world snaps out in an angry screech of white. An angry screech of white that flies up through the front of his skull and into the grey matter of his brain, liquefying, consuming. 

And then gone. 


	2. Chapter 2

Washington’s mouth is dry. 

His tongue feels heavy and stupid in his mouth and his throat aches and scratches from the dehydration. 

But he’s not dead. 

He aches, the insides of his chest and the muscles of everything else, it all aches. Except his legs. He can’t feel his legs. 

_ “If you hurt, you’re still alive.” _ His drill sergeant had snapped at him, once, a long time ago, and Washington had flippantly remarked that he wished he  _ was  _ dead if it meant he had to feel the pain of  _ this fucking stupid drill _ .

But he’s not dead.

Dead people don’t groan. But Washington does.

It hurts, pulls on his dry and aching throat, but it’s a sound and he can hear it. It’s a weirdly reassuring sound.

“Wash, you’re awake!” Doc. It’s Doc. The sound is loud and close and  _ here _ , Washington winces but his ears aren’t ringing anymore. 

Anymore.

Tex. Meta. The warthog, the pain, all that fucking blood, Washington’s dry mouth still tastes vaguely metallic and he’s cold. One of his arms smacks the wall in his rush to try and get up.

“Oh, easy, easy, I— I’ll get you some water, alright? Hold on.” There’s the thump of boots on metal and then there’s quiet. 

Washington doesn’t open his eyes. The room isn’t bright, there is no bright light, it’s fine, he uselessly licks his lips and only irritates dry skin. 

He hears the return of boots on metal and a moment later, a warm hand is under his back, between his shoulder blades. Washington’s not wearing a shirt. He groans, the sound guttural in the back of his throat, as Doc elevates him up enough to safely drink the cold glass placed to his lips. 

Condensation drips from the sides and Doc fits his hand at the back of Washington’s skull, holding him still, careful, hands soft and non-calloused and very much not a soldier’s grip. 

The hand doesn’t leave with the glass, but Washington doesn’t care, he just inhales and tries to open his eyes. They ache, the lids twitch and refuse to move much, but they work. So there’s that.

“Doc?” His voice is a pained croak but that’s fine. “W— What—”

“Hold on, quick question. Am I talking to Agent Washington?”

“Wha—?”

“Am I talking to Agent Washington right now?”

“Y— Yeah…” Wash can think of the implications of that later when his head stops hurting. “It’s me…” He licks his lips. “W-Where—?” 

“You’re in Blood Gulch, Wash. Do you remember Blood Gulch?” 

“…Mhmm…” He shot some of the sim troopers here. Doc was stuck in a wall. No, wait, that was Valhalla. Blood Gulch was hot and dry. Even though Washington’s thoughts derail to the desert, the Meta, he just feels colder. “H— when— the  _ Meta— Epsilon _ !” It comes out in a desperate gasp-wheeze that startles the hand against his neck. 

“Easy, easy, Wash. The Meta’s gone. He’s dead now, you’re safe. Epsilon’s gone, too.” 

Meta. Meta, Maine, gone, he wants to ask how, he wants to know the details, but he can’t. He can’t get the words out. He stares blankly ahead, processing, and closes his eyes. Maine died a long time ago. The AI, purging them, it didn’t bring Maine back. 

It just upset the creature in his place. 

“T-The UNSC did they take—”

“Yeah, Wash. They took Epsilon. He went into the unit.”

That meant that they couldn’t reach him. Epsilon was gone, gone away and useless and so was that Beta replicate and Washington couldn’t bring himself to care. Epsilon was gone. 

That was good. Maybe the UNSC would use him to take down the remnants of Freelancer, maybe they wouldn’t be able to reach him, but Washington didn’t care. He cared about something else. 

“H— How? The Meta,” he adds for clarification. 

“Wash, I really don’t think I should tell you, you’ve been unconscious for so long and you already—”

“How?” Washington repeats, has to, because he needs to fucking know. He knows how North died, how York died, Carolina, C.T, Tex, all of them (except Wyoming, but, you know, fuck Wyoming).

Knowing how makes it feel real. Truth. The Director never told Alpha the specifics in his sick experiments, he left Alpha to guess those on his own. To calculate whether they died fast or died slow, blood loss of the sudden stop of a fall. That was why he had to cut away Delta, after all. 

“.... The Reds… hooked him up to the warthog and… pushed it off the cliff.” 

_ There must have been so much blood on the warthog, _ Washington thinks, wonders if the drag smeared his blood in the snow and how far a fall it would have been. If it broke Maine’s neck or pulped him inside his armor, if it ultimately even matters. 

It doesn’t. 

Washington imagines putting Maine’s massive body back onto the tray of the blurry morgue he’s imagined putting all of his friends to rest in since he learned what became of them. 

It works. A little. Sometimes the latches come undone, or Wash undoes them, it doesn’t matter, but they stay closed for right now and that’s all they need. 

South’s door is a charred, warped mess of metal fused to the wall, Texas’ slot is empty though the latch is closed, and Florida is still in armor within his. 

Wash doesn’t think about that, though. 

He thinks about the waiting darkness and the mass of muscle under black bodysuit, and the vacancy in Maine’s expression as he closes the door and that’s it. That’s it now. Put to rest. 

“Wash?”

Washington is back in the sim trooper base, Doc’s hand is cradled around his neural ports, hesitantly squeezing, and Washington forces himself to exhale. It doesn’t hurt. Doc’s hands are soft and warm and  _ safe _ .

“Here…” He says, because he is, he’s here now, on this poor quality military mattress with Doc’s hand at the base of his skull. The morgue vanishes, Washington closes the door. Washington doesn’t know why he imagined a manual door, not an automatic one. 

“Okay, how do you feel?”

Washington takes a moment to process that. A ‘fine’ would be an utterly unconvincing lie and also Doc is a medic, no matter how stupid, he’d be able to tell Washngton was  _ not  _ fine. 

“‘M head hurts.” 

“Oh, that’s the concussion. There’s probably some aspirin around here, somewhere. What about the rest of you? Your legs? Stomach? Back?”

Doc’s questions are… weirdly specific.

Washington’s brow furrows for a moment, pain pulsing through the shifting muscles, and he can’t really feel the blanket on his stomach, on his legs, he still can’t feel his legs. He feels the warm press of the sheets, his own body heat sinking into the fabric, against his back, another point of him being alive. 

“Can’t feel m’legs…” 

“Oh…” That does not bode well for anything in Washington’s gut or mind right now and his brain already starts gearing up for something bad, the pre-adrenaline dump.

“W-What did you do—” Washington’s sentence derails into harsh coughs, clawing at his raw throat and it rattles hard through his chest. He can feel the spasming of his lungs and his body and Doc presses another ungloved hand to his chest. There’s the rub of fabric— bandages— tightly bound around his arms, his shoulder, stomach, he’s not dead but he’s fucked up. 

“I hope you didn’t develop pneumonia—”

“What’d you do?” Washington wheezes as Doc works with the pillow until he can prop Washington’s lower back against it. 

“I— I didn’t  _ do  _ anything, Wash—”

“ _ Doc. _ ”

“I’m serious, Wash, I didn’t do anything, but—” 

“But what?” Washington does not sound threatening. He wants to, fuck, he wants to, but he sounds like a wheezy old man and that’s the least threatening tone he’s ever used. 

“Wash, you— you took a warthog to the back, it— we did our best—”

His eyes open. They ache, the world is an inconceivable blur of gray walls and the brown of Doc’s skin, but he needs his eyes  _ open _ . 

“What?” Washington repeats, because he wants Doc to tell him, not fucking waffle around without explaining why Washington can’t feel his goddamn legs. 

He shifts his arms, uses his elbows to support his upper body weight, “Washington!” Doc scolds but Washington already sees the cold glint of metal curving up across the center of his stomach, over his navel, and it shouldn’t be  _ there _ .

Bandages, bound around his torso, dividing skin and metal but beyond it is still curved metal and that’s Washington’s  _ stomach  _ now. 

“What?” Washington grabs at the blanket, pulls it, Doc places a hand on Washington’s but he flicks it away (not with much force, he’s a sore mess) and shoves the blanket aside and— 

Metal. Gray and black and smooth, joints circular and rested within hollow sockets and there are seams along the insides of his thighs. There is no skin, no muscle, no bone, no movement, it is all fucking metal and it is not encasing Washington’s legs.

It  _ is  _ Washington’s legs. 

His chest jerks in his vision, airway pinching shut with such sudden viciousness that he gags and Doc presses a hand to his shoulder. There’s a series of tremors, working outwards from his lungs into his arms.

“W— What the fuck…” He wheezes and Doc’s hand moves to his back, over his lungs, rubbing circles, he’s talking but all Washington can focus on are the adrenaline-fear-blurred memories of the Meta throwing the warthog, he turned his back, he turned his fucking back and now he doesn’t have his  _ legs _ and— 

Washington’s muscles twitch, jerk, saliva and acidic fluid from the back of his throat drip past his teeth and his lips, landing on the smooth metal curve of his stomach. Nothing comes out of his mouth but bile and it’s gross but his stomach doesn’t react to it and he retches again and again but nothing comes out. 

“Oh, Wash, Wash, easy, you— you haven’t had anything solid since Sidewinder, I can go grab something, do you want me to—”

“Fuck,” Washington gags, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth, an attempt to get it to fucking  _ stop _ . “Fuck.” He repeats between the retches.

Doc strokes circles on Washington’s back, as if that would make this any better.

As if anything could make this any better. 

  
  
  


“Hey, Wash, I— I’m gonna get you some food, okay?”

The words don’t process in Washington’s head. They don’t process so he just stares at the artificial smooth curves of his knee joints. Freelancer never put a fake human inside Epsilon’s new body, apparently. Didn’t put up artificial skin and hair in a resemblance of a young Leonard Church like an idealized Allison within Tex’s.

The thought makes Washington feel like clawing the panelling of his legs off, as if there’d be something special underneath.

“Wash,” fingertips press into the meat of Washington’s shoulder. Washington tilts his head, forces himself to look at Doc. “I’m gonna get you some food. You should eat, it’s been a few days and you were borderline anemic for a bit.”

“Okay.” 

_ “Tell you what, why don’t you stick to not understanding medicine?”  _ echoes in the back of Washington’s head, in his throat, and he watches Doc make his way out of the room. 

Washington is hungry.

The thought hits him out of nowhere even though there is no hollow ache in his gut, in his stomach, but he knows he’s hungry. Like the fact he knows he doesn’t have his fucking legs. 

Washington leans back, observing the bandages twining up his arms, over the burns, where his armor failed him or wasn’t thick enough, where another thing managed to get past and hurt him. So many things hurt him. His head aches and Washington sucks in a breath. 

His eyes burn, maybe, maybe he’s crying, he shouldn’t cry that’ll make the headache worse, but the corners of his vision blur again. Washington remains there, hands curled at his sides, and he refuses to fucking cry over this.

People lose limbs all the time, that’s fucking war, he isn’t _ dead _ . He could have been, he almost was, but… he’s not. 

Doc taps Washington’s shoulder and he jerks, blinking rapidly away at tears he’s not entirely sure are there. 

“You okay?”

  
“I— I’m… yeah… Just… I don’t… Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, you did just have a pretty traumatic experience… How about you eat, huh?” Doc carefully hands him a bowl. It’s warm and pleasant in Washington’s hands and he tightens his grip on it. He doesn’t trust his hands, at the moment, but he keeps them there. The contents are some creamy looking soup that he can’t name. 

“I know its not the best, but, honestly it’s probably best to have you eat something easy. Sarge… has no idea how well your whole robot-stomach-thing works. He had to improvise with what he had.” 

“Robot… stomach… thing.” Washington echoes, looking back at the bowl and it looks way more appealing then the ration bars, MREs, and intravenous stim rations he’s been surviving on for upwards of the last four years. “Did you make this?”

“Yeah, I did. You don’t have any allergies, do you?”

“No, no, I don’t…” That’s genuine concern in Doc’s tone. It’s kinda startling. There’s a spoon in the bowl but Washington doesn’t want to risk spilling the soup on himself, even if there was no skin to burn below his ribs. 

Washington lifts the bowl to his mouth and drinks it because that’s the only solution he can come up with.

The soup is  _ good _ . It’s homemade and not something out of an army supply drop and the weird gasp of pleasure he makes around the lip of the bowl is absolutely  _ not  _ in his control and therefore not his fault.

Doc is staring at him. 

Washington indulges in the warm sensation spreading from his throat to his chest.

“You good there, Wash?” Doc asks, heading the thoughts off before they derail into the strategic plotting involving this room’s utilitarian floor plan, and Washington doesn’t meet Doc’s eyes, just glances at his face. He looks more surprised than concerned.

“Y— Yes, I’m… I’m fine… I just… It’s… This is good.” The words are halting and stuttered and awkward. Washington quickly resumes drinking more of it. He’s basking in the warmth of it, the taste,  _ god,  _ when was the last time he had soup like this?

“I’m guessing you haven’t had a good home cooked meal in a while, huh?”

“Kinda hard when your life is consumed by the military.”

“Yeah... I did join as a conscientious objector you know.”

“... A what?”

“A conscientious objector. A pacifist.” 

“... huh.” Washington thinks, maybe, he knew someone like that once. Washington thinks, maybe, that someone was turned to slag on the front lines. “But you shot—”

“That was Simmons’ idea. And… I don’t think we should talk about the Meta right now. Or any of  _ that _ .” 

“ _ That _ ?”

“Yes,  _ that. _ ”

“... Okay…” Washington’s not sure he wants to talk about it ever, anyway, instead taking a long drink from his bowl.

“Y’know… Caboose really wanted see you once you woke up. He was pretty worried about you. He even painted your armor and everything so you could fit in on Blue Team” 

“Caboose,” Washington echoes because asking a question doesn’t feel right. Showing concern about Caboose, about his armor, he can’t bring himself to do with words. He does take a moment to think about what Caboose would have seen, how fucked up Washington’s body had been, torn apart and spilling gallons of red and internal organs into the pure white snow. 

“Wait, fit— fitting in on Blue Team?”

“Oh, yeah, after Sarge put your legs and stuff together.” Doc’s gaze twitches away, as if even hinting at a train of thought about the fight was a horrific idea. “Caboose and Tucker claimed you for Blue Team. They said it had something to do with evening out the teams.”

“But… The Red and Blue thing is… fake.”   
  


“Yeah but that doesn’t mean they’re just gonna up and  _ go _ . Have you seen a news net these days? Humanity isn’t about to get eradicated anymore, some aliens are our friends, some humans are rearing up to try and kill each other again, and who knows what colonies are still around at this point. The world’s a new, scary place. None of us wanna be out there right now.”

Washington hadn’t really thought about that. He hadn't really considered the world outside of Freelancer, outside of Epsilon, the Director. It'd just been a footnote in his path, background noise in his journey towards revenge for all that had been done to him and the Alpha. Washington hadn't even considered the idea of living in a world post-war, or what that would have even entailed. 

Life after was either death or prison or some conceptual vision of freedom that never really solidified in Washington's hands. 

A simple game of Capture the Flag, running on with people who kinda wanna shoot you but not really, seems a lot better than whatever idealistic retirement Washington could have possibly tried to obtain.

“So… I’m on blue team now?”

“Yeah, essentially. None of us plan on throwing you out there yet, though. We wanna wait until you’re at least  _ mostly  _ healed before you do so much as go on a walk. But we have your armor ready for when you are.”

“My… armor?”

“Well, it’s… Yeah, essentially.”

Doc is avoiding saying the name. Washington can recognize him avoiding the name, avoiding the memories, as if that could make Washington any more stable or any better. 

“It’s Epsilon’s, isn’t it?”

“Uh—”

“You can use his name. It’s not gonna… set me off, or anything.”

“I’m not sure about that.”

“I am. At least right now… So it’s Epsilon’s armor?”

Doc resigns himself to explaining with that, apparently. “Yes, it is. We gave your armor to the UNSC so they’d think you were dead.” 

“And I’m guessing the rest of me?” Washington asks, nodding at his legs, and Doc swallows down whatever it is he was going to say and just nods. 

“Yeah, we did. It was a mess.” 

Washington drinks more of his soup, tries to ignore the pulsing pain of using his throat, forces away the images he conjures up for himself and instead asks; 

“... The UNSC really thinks I’m dead?”

“Yeah, they do.”

“... Thank you. For helping me… even after all I did.”

“It was a group effort. But you’re welcome.” Doc smiles. Doc smiles and it’s genuine and Washington drinks more of his soup instead of thinking about it. 

Doc remains quiet while Washington finishes off the bowl. He likes not feeling cold. 

“W— when can I start… moving around?” 

“Moving around?”

“Yeah, moving around.” He swallows nothing. It still hurts. “About Sarge… My— my legs, I need to… be able to use them.” He doesn’t think about it too hard, he needs to adapt, adapt and soldier on through the fucked up of everything within and around him. That’s what the Gunny told him, told him as he gawked at the molten slag that had once consisted of five living bodies and a warthog. Adapt and soldier on until it’s done. 

“You  _ can _ use them, once they get turned on.”

“Turned on?”

“Yeah, uh, Sarge kinda switched them off when you started having… issues, during the trip back. They still work, though, Sarge pulled them off of Epsilon’s body after he went into the unit.” Washington tastes acid in the back of his throat and he wishes he could drown it in a loud sip of the soup. His fingers are quaking and there’s a chance he might drop the bowl.

“Oh, Wash, I’m sorry I just—” Something must change in Washington’s posture or something, something that Doc picks up on, but Washington can’t bring himself to hide the creeping realization

_ Issues.  _

The realization finally strikes like ice landing in Washington’s stomach and he freezes. The bowl doesn’t react to the stress of his hands. His throat aches. 

“I’ve been awake.” Washington says, quietly, mostly to himself, but Doc still hears him. 

“You’ve—  _ Wash— _ ” 

“I— I’ve woken up before now… and… not understood… what was…” He soldiers on, focuses on inhaling, exhaling, and the words coming out of his mouth. “I’ve woken up thinking I was… someone else… right?”

“Uh… Well, not  _ quite,  _ but you lost a lot of blood and you’d been through so much. Being disoriented is expected in cases like that.”

Washington swallows, stressing his fingers against the bowl and focusing on the residual warmth, on the fact he is here now and not dead and his legs are fucking metal and  _ Epsilon’s  _ and— 

Washington can’t say he’s ever had the wild idea of tearing his own legs from his body before, but now it flows wild and new and bad, bad, bad taste in his mouth,  _ bad idea _ . He’d get relay fluid and coolant and whatever else Freelancer shoved in its androids all over the bed, the floor. 

“Wash, it— you’re okay now, so I don’t think it—”

“Don’t.” Washington croaks and he really, really, really needs to stop trying to pinpoint the weakest points of the joints in the metal legs, where he can work fingernails into the seams and pull them free, tear out wires by the handfuls, he needs to stop. “I— I didn’t… that… it’s not new… for me to…” He exhales, forcibly, between his teeth and maybe he should go back to sleep before he starts going psychotic in this tiny metal room and winds up killing another Sim Trooper. 

Doc makes a weirdly sympathetic sound and Washington’s hands really are shaking, he’s a special ops agent, he shouldn’t be like  _ this _ .

“You don’t have to talk about it.”

A hysterical bubble works out through Washington’s throat and comes out in a weird sob-laugh that seems to startle Doc.

“What’d I say?” 

“You— I think you saw us as people you knew before. You kept calling out for a Carolina and a North. But, I mean, you were already disoriented from the—”

“North’s dead.” Washington states with cold matter of fact. “I blew up his armor. Blew up his sister’s, too. That was my job.”

“Oh…  _ Wash. _ ” The sympathy is physically palpable and Washington wants to curl up into a ball and fight off the hand that rests on his shoulder. He wants to fight away the pity that worms into his stomach and makes him want to yell. “That’s… That’s absolutely terrible.”

“I  _ know _ , Doc.”

“... I— you don’t… You’re away from that now, though. You’re okay now.”

“‘Okay’” Washington echoes, with the obvious disbelief and a snip of the hysterical laugh from before and Doc doesn’t look at him. Washington hasn’t been ‘okay’ in over half a damn decade. He’s not going to start now, no matter how badly he wants to. “Yeah, I’ll be okay.” 

“Wash—”

“When will you guys turn my legs back on?” Until then, until the Sim troopers decide they’re going to let him, Washington is gonna remain bedridden and disabled. He’s at what little mercy they could possibly have for him. Doc was a medic, Washington didn’t expect him to be unsympathetic to a nearly-dead man like Washington. 

“Oh, uh, soon. You’re still recovering. We don’t want you accidentally tearing anything else trying to move your legs.”

“Right…. Right, that… I understand that…” Also, Washington killed one of them and nearly got the rest of them killed. It was fairly reasonable to assume that letting the psychotic Freelancer loose in the area was the last thing they wanted to do.   
  


Washington looks at his legs again. 

Matte gray separated from the glossy black of his inner thighs and sockets, the artificial swell of black containing mechanisms that currently went unused in the space of the metal calves. The white model piece numbers were stamped into the individual pieces that were merged into each other in a piece of machinery meant to carry the rest of him, so small they could maybe go unseen.

Washington reaches out a hand and runs his calloused fingertips along the smooth metal, fingertips curving towards the seams (how much strength would he need to tear into, pull the metal away, if it would pop or scream like the warthog as it cleaved through his stomach) until his hand reaches the abrupt dip leading to the socket containing his left knee. 

He can’t really feel it. There’s an awareness, but it mainly comes from the fact he’s looking at it. He can imagine how it feels, can remember how it feels for him to run a hand along his own leg, where soft flesh hid built muscle from travelling on foot. 

There were so many scars on his legs. A plasma burn from a beam rifle across his right shin that had burned through his right greave , flimsy army grunt armor. The raised white lines along the heel of his left foot where he stepped on glass as a kid, the puckered bullet scar in his left thigh that Connie had stopped, saved his life until he got to medical— 

Gone. 

Washington closes his eyes and breathes. 

He listens to the inhale and exhale and the feeling of it against the back of his teeth. There is no ache of grief in the pit of his chest, a feeling he’s intimately familiar with, just… hollow. Like there’s a feeling there but it hasn’t arrived yet.

He shouldn’t cry, not over his legs, he has new ones, better ones, he can adapt to this situation and carry on but… 

“Wash? Are you okay?”

“... I’m… yeah, I’m okay.”

Doc doesn’t seem to buy it but doesn’t push it. “Alright. Are you… How about you try and get some rest? I’ll be back to check on you later.” 

Washington mutely nods. Doc pats him on the shoulder, light and friendly and  _ “i’m here, don’t forget that” _ in a way that’s just too weak to be North but draws up the memory, sharp and painful, just the same. 

“W— wait a second. Doc?”

“Yeah?”

“Wh— why’d you help me? Why did you help…. After… I tried to..?” 

“I’m a medic, I swore an oath. And none of us could probably handle the guilt of letting you die like _that_. Caboose, especially.” 

Washington stares at him, considers how much empathy Caboose can apparently compress into his big skull. How much that can subsume the stain of Washington’s past actions and how much was plainly forgotten. 

“You should get some rest, Wash. If you can.” Doc’s voice startles him out of his thoughts. 

“Right… I… will. I’ll try.”

Doc smiles at him, an encouraging kind that fits his soft brown face especially, and Washington blinks back. Doc never really smiled at him like that, he only ever took his helmet off to eat and drink because they were in the fucking desert, and Washington never felt like he was being smiled  _ at _ . 

But he is. 

It’s… okay. 


	3. Chapter 3

Three days. 

After some negotiations between Red Team and Doc of which Tucker willingly excludes himself from (plus some appealing to Sarge’s ridiculous need for some kind of physical conflict), Sarge agrees to turn Washington’s legs back on in three days. 

In three days, Washington will either die of some belated surgical complications or lose his mind at bed rest (“At which I’ll put ‘im out of his misery with m’ trusty shotgun!”). Tucker thinks the time is way too short, Washington resigns himself to it, and thus Caboose subjects him to whatever board games he left behind in the base. Which consists of  _ Monopoly _ , a deck of cards, and  _ Sorry! _

Caboose doesn’t get the joke.

But at least it keeps the two of them occupied for the first day while Tucker finishes checking up on what Kai left on base before vanishing, presumably off planet to throw her raves somewhere more accessible. 

It’s weirdly quiet, considering the chaos his last few days had been swept up in. Life-ending chaos and psychos trying to get him in his sleep, replaced with a crippled special ops guy and Caboose in the somewhat tranquil canyon. 

It’s kinda disconcerting, especially with Donut being gone. Tucker had gotten so used to hearing the guy at all hours of the day, that standing alone on top of Blue Base feels just as incredibly lonely as he had felt locked away in the desert temple. 

Or maybe he just misses Church. The feelings can blend into each other sometimes. 

But Washington doesn’t attempt to kill Caboose by the end of the day. The only big event was Caboose setting the kitchen on fire trying to make Washington a snack. That and Washington gradually figuring out how his robotic organs were supposed to work. 

That night, though, Washington wakes up screaming. 

It’s terrifying. Tucker wouldn’t be able to recall his dream, the one that he was viciously torn out of to the sound of the most bloodcurdling screaming he’s ever heard, but it likely wasn’t even that interesting.

The horror movie screams were never quite like these. Not even Caboose’s or Junior’s ‘O’Malley Nightmares’ after everything in Blood Gulch were never like  _ this _ . Those sounded like kicked puppies. 

This sounded like kicking a skinned man into glass. 

Tucker’s sword is in his hand before he even knows where the screaming’s coming from. Tucker’s still in his bodysuit (sleeping out of armor feels weird enough after the past few months even though this is not much of an improvement) as he charges out of his room, sword alight in the darkness. 

The closest example Tucker can compare this noise to was when the warthog flipped and tore Washington in two, but— 

“Washington!” Tucker charges for the man’s room. He has no clue what to expect, what could possibly have happened, to make Washington scream like that. 

There’s nothing in the room. There is nothing that Tucker can see in the door of Washington’s room, in the glow of his sword, except Washington screaming. Screaming and screaming and— 

Hands, clawing and scrabbling at the bandages along his chest, the divider between skin and metal— 

“Wash!” Doc nearly gets his torso cut in half, appearing behind Tucker without so much as a noise until his exclamation. “Oh— Oh, no, another— Tucker, get the lights!” Doc orders, rushing to the thrashing Freelancer’s side, and Tucker does. 

The first thing Tucker recognizes is the blood, bright and red on Washington’s fingernails as he screams and claws. Doc reaches out, tries to grab hold of them. All while screaming Washington’s name over and over. 

Doc doesn’t even yelp as he’s shoved aside,  _ hard _ . 

“Doc!” The man catches himself on the crate they’d remade into a nightstand. 

“Get— his wrists, Tucker, you’re stronger, get his wrists!”

“What?”

“You heard me!”

Doc lunges forward again with determination. Tucker drops his sword into his pocket, the blade vanishing without his thumb over the power button, and rushes to take the Freelancer’s wrists into his. 

Washington is  _ strong _ . His arms jerk, hard, against Tucker’s hold, but he forces them up and overhead. He can see the quakes in the muscles of his arms, though. Doc presses a hand into Washington’s chest, shoving the man back against his bed. 

“Wash, Wash do you hear me? It’s Doc! Washington! Wake up!” Doc was screaming now, close to Washington’s face, eyes blown wide, while Tucker shoved all of his weight into pinning the man’s wrists above his head.

Tucker is struck with the sudden thought that Junior’s nightmares were never quite like this. Junior typically came back to the waking world with little more than some comforting words and the  _ thump thump _ of Tucker’s heartbeat. Sometimes he’d need to pull out the sword, show Junior he was safe. 

Doc’s hand smacks, hard, against Washington’s chest. Tucker’s brain, momentarily, switches to the scene in the Falcon where Washington’s breathing stopped and Doc had to do CPR because Grif wouldn’t do it.

The desperate inhale that follows digs a pit into Tucker’s stomach as he watches Washington’s eyes snap open. 

Washington gasps, head snapping back hard against the pillow as he presumably processes what’s happening or the sensation. 

“Doc—  _ Doc— _ ” It comes out in a desperate choked wheeze, eyes burning under the bright lights of the room. “Doc— Doc, Doc,  _ DocDocDoc— _ !” The name tangles in Washington’s desperate rambling, eyes not even on the man’s face. 

“Easy, easy, Wash, I’m here. I’m right here.” The medic’s hand move to Washington’s shoulder

“L— le’go… Le’ me go.” He chokes out, eyes squeezed shut as he continues twisting about, fingers stretching and failing to do much more than smear droplets of Washington’s blood on Tucker’s hands. His legs don’t move, they just rock with the momentum. 

“I— Do you know your name?” 

“M’ stomach— bleeding—”

“Your name. C’mon, you can say it, you know it.” It sounds more like a desperate plea coming out of Doc, one that has Tucker concerned beyond what he should be. 

“W— Washington, I’m  _ Washington _ , please— help, help me— Bleeding—”

“You’re not bleeding, Wash.” That’s a lie. The proof is getting all over the backs of Tucker’s hands. “You’re not bleeding. It was a nightmare.”

“N— I— I feel it,  _ I feel it _ —! I’m dying—!” Washington gasps, twisting his shoulders. 

“No, Wash, I’m right here. I am  _ right here _ , you’re not dying, remember where you are? Remember? Tell me where you are.”

“I— Val— Blood Gulch— I’m in— Blood Gulch.”

“That’s right, Wash. Tucker? Tucker, I need you to let Washington go.”

“Yeah, yeah, got it.” Releasing Washington’s wrists is weirdly difficult, but the man doesn’t react. His hands move for his stomach and Tucker almost grabs them again, before he sees the hands press over the bandages and metal. Checking. 

“Not— I—” Washington starts, eyes blowing wide to see the small red lines, broken skin from the freshly healed scars, blood drawn from where Washington’s human half met the robotic half. “I’m bleeding.”

“It— don’t worry, Wash, it’s not that bad. It’s not that bad. Okay? Don’t look at it, it isn’t—”

“I— I did it—” The man pales a concerning amount, he looks almost sickly under all his freckles. “I did that.”

“You were having a nightmare, Wash, I know— I know your nightmares get bad. One sec, I’m gonna go grab the first aid kit, and you’ll be just dandy. Alright? Don’t do anything.”

Washington says nothing, stares at the orange-red smears on his hand, over his exposed ribs. They really needed to find some shirts for this guy. Doc simply pats Washington on the shoulder and rushes out. 

Leaving Tucker alone with the crazy Freelancer.

Great. 

“So… are your nightmares always like that?”

"What?"

"Y'know. Blood-curdling, scream-inducing nightmares? I get you Freelancer guys all have like super troubled pasts and shit but if you're gonna make a habit of screaming and tearing your guts to pieces—”

“I’m not.” Washington says with conviction. “I— I’m not gonna make a habit of it. I won’t.”

"Yeah… Okay…” Tucker shifts on his bare feet. “So you... wake up doing that all the time?"

"No, no I don't." Washington quickly answers, but Tucker can’t really buy into it, especially considering what Doc had just said. "I— I thought— I woke up and I thought I was bleeding... Like... right after the accident… I was… trying to stop it." He stares down at the drying blood on his hands. 

"Oh," Tucker blinks at him, shoves down the memory of Washington screaming his lungs out, torn to pieces in the snow while the Meta rampaged on like it didn’t matter. "That was… bad." 

“Yes… Very bad."

"Yeah... Damn, does Simmons have nightmares like that? Do we need to start a Cyborg Support Group for you two? Or Grif, too? The guy did—” 

"A— Simmons is a cyborg?"

"You didn't know that?"

"No," Washington ran a hand along his thigh, likely bemoaning the loss of functional legs. The guy had been really upset over it when he’d woken up the other day. "I didn't."

“Want me to tell you how? It’s, like, absolutely absurd. I’m serious. You’ll laugh.”

“... Would he be upset about it? Simmons?”

“No, dude, it’s like— it’s public domain, at this point. Except to the UNSC. Sarge broke, like, a hundred different regulations in the military and the medical field  _ each _ pulling it off.” 

Washington’s eyebrows rise. It looks kinda funny, him being flat on the bed. Tucker actually feels way taller than him. “.... okay.”

"Right, so, back in Blood Gulch like two years ago, Grif got ran over by a tank.” 

“ _ What _ ?”

“Relax, I was driving it and this was back when Church got shot with a tank so we were all actively trying to kill each other—”

_ “That happened?” _

“Shut up, I’m telling a story. Okay, so, Sarge was really into making someone of his team into a cyborg at the time. Dunno why, he already had Lopez. I guess he wanted someone who spoke English." 

"Lopez..." Tucker continues onward, as if he doesn't see the way Washington's expression shifts as he makes that connection in his brain. The story’s supposed to distract him.

"So, Grif got ran over by our tank. But he lived, must’ve been all the fat. Cushions the bones or whatever. So Sarge took him back to base and decided he was gonna take Simmons' intestines and hand and whatever else and put it in Grif and then he was gonna put the cyborg parts in Simmons." 

"... What?"

“Yeah. I learned most of that from Donut, who apparently has no sense of what ‘squick’ means because he grew up on a farm in Iowa or something. He was there the whole time.”

“Earth still has farms?”

Tucker blinks at him. “You’re not from Earth?”

“... I… No. No, I was from—”

“I’m back!” Doc announces, rushing in at something just short of a jog with the med-kit in his hands. He drops to Washington’s side as he opens it. “Look at that, the bleeding’s practically stopped on its own.” 

Washington lifts his arms away from his stomach, watching as Doc quickly unwinds the bandages that Washington had pulled apart and went about disinfecting the reopened wounds. 

Tucker can see the muscles in Washington’s jaw go tight as Doc dabs disinfectant on the wounds, but the guy doesn’t say anything. Just lets Doc work until the wounds are covered up.

“Hello?” 

Caboose is in the doorway. 

“Oh— uh, Caboose, hey—”

“I heard you scream, are you okay?”

“Dude, it’s a bit late for that—” Tucker starts, but Washington doesn’t seem to hear him.

“No, yeah, I’m— I’m alright. Just a… a nightmare.”

“Oh,” Caboose nods, understanding, because of course he does. “Of course. Would you like an after-nightmare hug?” 

“I— no, Caboose, I— I don’t.”

  
Caboose blinks, confused, and then nods again, not looking offended at all. “Oh, okay. Would you like me to stay?” 

“You— you don’t have to. Go…” Washington blinks, swallows, before nodding towards Caboose’s room. “Go ahead and go back to bed.”

“Okay. See you in the morning, Church!”

It slips out so easy, as Caboose turns and leaves, that if Tucker was unaware of the cyborg in the room he would have assumed Church was actually there. 

Something in Washington’s expression darkens, one of his hands drifts up to his neck, at the starburst burn scars along the back of his neck that Tucker only briefly spotted. His hands are still smeared in his blood. So are Tucker’s. 

Speaking of which… 

“I— I’m gonna go wash this off. I’ll be right back.”

“No problem!” Doc calls after him, leaving Washington to deal with the haphazard bandaging. The guy had learned at least a  _ little  _ bit more post-War. 

_ Wash, I know— I know your nightmares get bad.  _

The blood turns the water pink. That’s not surprising, but Tucker watches the water swirl until it’s transparent once again, until all the creases in his fingers are clean again. 

_ Doc, hand on Washington’s chest, telling him to remember his name and where he was, remember, remember, remember— _

“What the fuck happened to him?”

The words come out of Tucker in a rush, once Doc’s out of Washington’s hearing range. 

“What?”

“You— you said Washington’s got crazy nightmares like this all the time. Now, I’ve lived with Caboose for a while, I dealt with all of his weird O’Malley nightmares,” Doc winces. “But he never woke up screaming and clawing and thinking he was dying. At worst. he woke up thinking  _ I’d  _ died.”

“That’s not really your business, Tucker. Washington’s got a lot of issues—”

“I know, he shot Donut and Lopez, he blew up one of his team mates, I know. But that doesn’t explain  _ that _ .” 

“I meant psychological issues, Tucker. Y’know, like Simmons’ weird daddy-issues—”

“Simmons doesn’t wake up thinking he’s dying.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t hear Simmons waking up screaming about not remembering his name.”

Doc’s lips pinch shut. 

“You kept telling him to remember his name and where he was. Why? You— you don’t have to give me fucking details but if this guy’s gonna  _ break  _ around Caboose—”

“He’s not. It— It’s something to do with Epsilon. I— I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. But when we were in the desert he woke up not remembering who he was… The Meta didn’t ever do anything about it. I had to figure it out.”

“... The Meta—”

“Sometimes Washington would call for him by a different name. It was… It hurts to watch him wake up like that, not knowing who he is.” Doc fidgets with his hands, doesn’t look Tucker in the face, instead looking at his hands.

There’s something in Doc’s expression, one that makes Tucker want to leave, that twists up all the parts in his chest the same way a sniffly- _ ’I didn’t kill you right?’ _ Caboose does, but less prominent. 

“And you’re  _ sure  _ you don’t know why?”

Doc turns away, running a hand through his curls. 

“Good night, Tucker.”

“Doc—”

“Keep Wash company. Leaving him alone is a bad idea right now.” The door slams behind Doc, leaving Tucker alone in the semi-dark, outlined by the light of Washington’s bedroom lights. 

“... Right.”

  
  


Day two passes without incident. Doc avoids Tucker, Tucker plays board games with Washington and Caboose (it’s a bit hard on the time bunk, they’re still wary of trying to move him), Tucker fills the empty time with telling Washington as many dumb stories as he can think of that don’t involve Church or Donut. 

Tucker has no idea if he’s doing that for himself or for Washington. 

The guy has a lot of scars, Tucker is beginning to notice. The typical fare for Great War vets, light plasma burns, bullets, a lot of them were probably lost to what everyone is beginning to refer to as The Incident, except for Grif who seems to be the only sane person in the canyon anymore.

Also the only one who’s willing to share a cigarette.

Tucker does not want to play Monopoly with Doc, Caboose, and Washington, and Grif wants to take a break. So the two of them hang out on a ledge, the one where Grif had a meltdown, the sun slowly drawing towards the other end of the canyon cliffs. 

“Hey, Grif?” Tucker turns the cigarette around in his fingers. It smells like shit, but he’s already starting to feel a little better as nicotine lazily coils through his veins. 

“Yeah?”

“Does Simmons ever have nightmares? About when he became a cyborg?”

Grif hums, staring up at the sky, at the faintest speckles of stars beginning to appear. “How should I know?”

“Do you?”

Grif nearly chokes on his cigarette, turning to look at Tucker.

“Why the fuck are you even asking?”

“You heard all the screaming last night, right?”

“Yeah. What  _ was  _ that?”

“Washington tearing his guts open because of a nightmare he had. Which, according to Doc, is normal.”

“... Well, damn. He can join the freaky nightmares club. Maybe have a challenge with Simmons over who has the loudest nightmare scream—”

“The guy wakes up not knowing who he is.” 

“... What?”

“Wash, he— he wakes up, not knowing who he is. Last night, Doc had to do this whole thing, asking ‘what’s your name, where are you, do you remember it’ before he could help him at all.” 

Grif just stares at him. “That’s fucked up.” 

“I know. I think it has something— I’m pretty sure it has something to do with AI. Like, Caboose still has nightmares about what O’Malley did. Or, tried to do, anyway. And I guess Doc does, too?”

“Oh, yeah, O’Malley was all up in Doc’s brain for a while. Shocked you’re letting him treat Wash.” 

“He’s more welcome in Blue Base than Sarge will ever be.”

“Y’know, if it weren’t for all your guys’ fuckin’ drama—”

“Excuse me?”

“I would take a page out of Simmons’ book and defect. Go and join you assholes. You’re less likely to shoot me than Sarge is, at this point.”

“Does Sarge have nightmares?”

“Tucker, I thought you were smarter than this.” Grif takes a big puff of his cigarette, looks up at the sky. Tucker takes it as a yes. “I’m starting to regret sharing my cigs with you.” 

The nicotene winding through his veins is a damn good break that Tucker very much does not want to lose. “Oh my god, please don’t take this away, I have not been able to wind the fuck down since we got back.”

Grif blinks at him, like the noises and words coming out of Tucker are the strangest thing he’s ever fucking heard in his life. 

“Oh, wow. You are a _ mess _ .”

Tucker pouts at him, sticking the cigarette back in his mouth. “I was stuck in the desert for several months on my own. I have the right to be.” 

“Dude, I was lined up in front of a firing squad. If anything,  _ I _ should be a bigger mess.”

“What?” Grif scratches at the bright freckled skin on the left side of his face, seemingly undisturbed. 

“Yeah. Honestly I’ve had Red Army assholes pointing their guns at me for so long I’m kinda used to it.”

“What’d you  _ do _ ?”

“Sold ammo to the Blues. Caboose was there. I was kinda hoping maybe we’d have gotten you. I mean, your aim is shit, but at least you’re tolerable. But you were off doin’ shit with aliens.”

“Yeah…” The smoke curls up into the sky, vanishing in the sunlight, and Tucker watches it go. 

“... Dude, don’t you go getting all emo and shit—”

“Do you ever miss Donut?” The question is out before Tucker’s even fully realized he’s said it.

“Huh?”

“Donut. Y’know. He was your teammate. Don’t you ever miss him?” 

“Nope.” Grif says, looking skyward again. “... Not at all.”

“Right,” Tucker looks, follows his gaze out over the edge of the canyon. “Me neither.” 

  
  


Tucker finds Doc half-armored in the livingroom when he gets back to the base, the chaos of Caboose somehow losing two-person Monopoly to Washington in the background.

“Hey, Doc. What’cha doing?” Doc stops midway through re-attaching a gauntlet. 

“Armoring up.”

“Why?”

“I’m going back to Valhalla.”

“You’re… what?”

“I’m going back to Valhalla.” Doc repeats, fiddles with the gauntlet. “To bury Donut.” 

“Oh, right…” Tucker combs a hand through his short dreads, thinks about whether he can convince Grif to give him a haircut or something. He definitely needs to shave. It’s easier thinking about that than thinking about Donut right now. Thinking about how far along the decomposition process is, if it’s already over, if the suit conserved his body despite the bullet hole. Tucker only knew corpses began smelling after a few hours. But that was the desert. “Well… How are you gonna get there?”

“I dunno, head up til I can get an uplink to Command, then call for extraction. That seems like a solid method.”

“And if that doesn’t work? Which it most definitely won’t cause Command doesn’t give a shit about us?”

“Walk, then. There’s military bases around, I can get to one of those and call for a ride from there. Unless they’ve all been emptied out. Which in that case I’ll just take a jeep or something.”

“But what about Washington?” 

“He’s gonna be okay.”

“How do you know that?”

Doc doesn’t respond, instead focusing on his other gauntlet. It attaches with a click. Tucker hates the grip in his stomach, the one that wants Doc to stay, that same one that had him kicking the wall earlier because they were back in Blood Gulch but nothing was the way it had been, the one that drove him to stomp over to Grif and ask for a fight only to get a cigarette.

“I don’t.” Doc finally admits. “But at this point I’ve done all I  _ know  _ how to do. I just want to bury Donut and get back to living somewhere nice where people aren’t shooting each other all the time or trying to hold me hostage.” The way Doc speaks, it sounds like Tucker’s kicked a hole in some dam, the one that he apparently kicked yesterday when talking about O’Malley, and the words are rushing out in a quick rush that Doc only manages to stop with a harsh click of teeth. 

That, to be fair, is a very reasonable thing to want. That, to be fair, is something Tucker doesn’t think he can ever really have. 

“Right. Well, good luck on that, then. I, uh… Pour one out for Donut for me? When you get there?” 

“... if I have anything to pour out, sure. I’ll do that for him.” 

“Thanks.” 

Doc’s gone by the time the sun goes down. 

Tucker still sits on top of the base, watching, fighting down that annoying feeling in his chest that everything is absolutely and irreversibly  _ wrong _ . 

  
  


Washington wakes up screaming a couple hours later. Tucker is just nodding off at the top of base when he hears it. 

He’s down the ramp and in the room before he’s even fully back with the waking world, before he knows if it’s Caboose or Church or him, before he remembers Church isn’t here anymore.

“Wash, Jesus— WASHINGTON!” Tucker screams at him, grabbing for the man’s shoulders, shaking him with a vengeance. “Wake up! Wake the fuck up you—” 

The fist hits Tucker before he even realizes it’s been raised. 

The force sends Tucker backwards, into a wall, and—

“Tucker?” 

Caboose standing in the doorway.

“Ow, fuck, ow!” The pain is thick in Tucker’s jaw, like molten lead, and even speaking hurts. His heart is pumping loudly in his ears, as he sees Washington’s body jerk and spasm. His long stroke of screaming is over, snapped off into vague animal noises in the back of his throat. 

“Tucker— Tucker, what do I do?” Caboose is at his side, eyes wide with concern, and there’s that paleness to his face that tells Tucker everything in a heartbeat. 

_ “You are not dead, right, Tucker?”  _

“I— hold Wash down, okay? Hold him down, but— look out, don’t let him hit you, alright?”

“Okay,” Tucker rushes for the lights while Caboose moves to pin Washington’s wrists down. Tucker has no idea if this would work, but there’s no way Washington could stay asleep through this for too long. There’s no way.

Caboose’s hands on Washington’s wrists, pressing them into the bed while begging for the guy to wake up, is no better in the light than it is in the dark. Maybe even worse.

At least there’s no blood.

“Hey, hey, asshole, wake the fuck up!” Tucker screams at Washington’s face, as if that’ll help. He grabs the man’s face, stilling his jerking head. “You hear me? Wake up!” 

The force that Tucker grabs Washington’s face with seems to drag him out of the nightmare. He gasps, the sudden snap in the tension cord running through his muscles something even Tucker feels. 

“A— awake— I’m awake— Doc?”

“No, I’m— remember me?”

There’s a concerning pause, Washington’s eyes practically bulging out of his face as he searches the details of Tucker’s face.

“T— Tucker— Tucker—!”

“Right, that’s my name. What’s yours?”

  
“Washington. I— I am Washington.”

Tucker nods, seeing the panic and fear fading from Washington’s face. 

“And we’re in?”

“Blue Base. We’re in Blue Base.” 

“There you go.” Caboose releases his grip on Washington’s wrist, steps back. Tucker can see the marks in the skin, can see them vanish as circulation returns to Washington’s hands. “You good?”

“I— I’m— I’m sorry, I—”

“You alright?” Tucker repeats, louder.

“I… Yeah, I’m… I’m alright.”

“Okay, good.” Tucker steps away, shoves his hands into pockets. “Good.” 

His jaw is most definitely going to bruise.


	4. Chapter 4

They carry Washington into the living room before Sarge comes to turn Washington’s legs back on.

Tucker at first takes the legs but figures out quickly that it weighs way, way more than he assumed. So he takes Washington’s shoulders while Caboose takes his legs, because despite how much Tucker would like it, Caboose cannot carry Washington on his own.

Plus, Tucker didn’t totally trust Caboose to be careful enough to tear more injuries in Washington’s back. There was still a jagged line, stitched as neatly as could be expected of a Helljumper, leading up from where his muscles met metal. Tucker had looked away when the spasms caused Washington to tear himself apart more.

With his better view with his head against Tucker’s chest, Washington could see the green-blue-purple mark along Tucker’s jaw. 

“Did— Tucker, I—” 

“Don’t worry about it man.” 

He would never admit to Washington that his teeth still ached. 

Tucker lets the Reds in only if they leave their weapons outside the door to base. Simmons is fidgety but Grif is relatively passive about it. After some squabbling, Sarge finally leaves his shotgun.

Grif raises an eyebrow at the bruise. Tucker doesn’t even have it in him to shrug it off, just turns to see Sarge turn Washington’s legs back on. 

Said process takes upward of twenty minutes and the entire time, Washington avoids looking in even the vague direction of his legs, instead studiously examining the ceiling. The mechanism is apparently accessed through Washington’s lower back, but no one expects the antsy special-ops guy to be willing to show his back to anyone, so Sarge opens up some component of Washington’s robotic hip.

Tucker lingers close, a presence, and he notes distantly that Washington’s attempted to kill (or at leats hurt) everyone in this room aside from himself. 

It makes his presence seem much more important than it probably is.

“Maybe we should install a switch.” Simmons suggests, at some point, catching the room’s attention. “Y’know, so Washington can turn the legs off whenever he wants?” 

Washington’s eyes are piercingly focused on Simmons. It’s vaguely concerning, and is probably why Simmons’ breaks out into a sweat. 

It’s one flicker of a memory, one reminder, and suddenly Tucker is saying “Yeah, no, abso-fucking-lutely not. No switch. No.”

“Uh, jeez dude, what’d switches ever do to you?”

_ You come ‘round here often? _

_ Seriously dude? _

“You have no fuckin’ idea.” 

The look Washington gives him is halfway between confusion and gratefulness. 

“Ghh—!” Washington’s head suddenly snaps back against the couch, his right leg jerking upwards. Tucker can see the tendons and bones in Washington’s fists, stark against skin.

“Wash?”

“You good, son?” Sarge asks, hands stalling, and Tucker will never get over the sight of Sarge with his hands inside of Washington’s body like it’s not one of the most invasive things Tucker assumes a cyborg can experience. 

“G— ow— I’m good— I’m good. It— A spasm, or something.” Washington repeats, exhaling sharply when Sarge’s hands start moving again. “I’m fine.”

Tucker doesn’t believe him. The variations of pale and green that his face keeps turning are unseen by Sarge but definitely seen by him. Simmons and Grif don’t point it out. Caboose doesn’t seem to even notice. 

Eventually, Sarge fixes the panelling back to Washington’s hip and steps back to let Washington give the legs a try. 

“Alrighty, son. Let’s see.” Sarge doesn’t give Washington a wide berth like everyone else does. 

His deep inhale and exhale go by quickly, but he seems to be trying his best to keep quiet. Tucker tries to ignore how concerning that probably should be. When Tucker sees the tremor in his arms as he forces his body to move, he makes a move to help. 

Washington lifts up a hand, stopping Tucker in his tracks at the edge of the couch.

“I— I can do it. I got it.” His legs thump over the side of the couch now. 

“You sure?”

“Yes,” he says, voice stiff as his legs. Tucker forces his hands to still at his sides while Washington slowly pushes himself upright from the couch.

And then he’s standing. 

Caboose is at his elbow, ready to try and catch Washington if he starts falling over. 

Washington sucks in a breath through his teeth, closing his eyes. One of his hands seems to find Caboose’s arm of its own volition.

“You good?”

“‘M fine.” Washington exhales, opening his eyes again. 

Something in the legs whirs and Washington takes a step forward.

He extends his arms out to his side, eyes big, as if he’s afraid he’ll fall over. Tucker notes with a gratefulness that nothing tears. The muscles of Washington’s torso (maybe one of Tucker’s older shirts could fit him) quiver against the freckled skin, but Washington doesn’t look like he’s about to die or pass out, so Tucker refrains from asking again. 

Washington releases Caboose, takes another step forward with his arms bowed out from his sides. Tucker can see the effort that Washington takes into forcing his arms stiff at his sides, and taking another step. He wobbles, but his hands are stubbornly curled into fists at his sides. 

Tucker tries not to think about that too hard. He doesn’t think he really wants to delve into the mental disaster that is Washington’s brain. He instead focuses on the legs, at the way that Washington steadies himself before each step.

It’s honestly a bit like watching a toy soldier. 

Washington carefully turns on his heel to face Sarge, who’s fidgeting with his gloves. 

“Th— thank you, Sarge…”

“No problem, Blue. Just don’t break ‘em, I might not be so willin’ to fix ‘em then! 

“Bullshit,” Grif coughs. 

Sarge shoots him a look out of the corner of his eye. “Now, men, to return to Red base! Onwards!”

“Yessir!” Simmons chirps, a grumbling Grif trailing behind, as the trio retrieved their weapons at the door and left. 

Thus, leaving Tucker and Caboose alone with Washington.

“You doing good?” Tucker asks, mainly to soothe the tension forming in his chest at the way that Washington’s muscles keep quivering and his face seems starkly pale. 

“Yeah, yeah, I just--”

“If you do need help, I will give it!” Caboose announces, loud. Washington just kind of stares at him, eyes big, as if unprocessing. 

“Well, uh… Thanks. Thanks Caboose.”

“I’ll help, too.” Tucker offers lamely. “I dunno how we’re gonna turn our ramps into stairs, though.”

“You-- You don’t have to, I’ll figure it out.”

“You sure?” Washington blinks at him, mouth open as if he doesn’t get why Tucker’s insisting on being helpful. Which, to be fair, is very new and very much related to the knot of tension in his chest at the idea of Washington slipping and cracking his head open on some part of the base. Tucker supposes it’s a tad bit selfish. 

“Yes. Yes, I’m sure.” 

“Okay, man.” There’s a pause as Tucker starts towards the kitchen before realizing something. “Hey, Washington?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you up for a tour? You could practice with your legs and get to know the place.”

Washington’s turned his torso about so he could easier look at Tucker.

“Uh, yeah. Yes, I’m up for it.” 

“Okay, c’mon.” Tucker gestured with his arm, trying not to stare too hard as Washington wobbled his way over. 

Good thing everything he needed was all on the same floor. 


End file.
